Action needed to save Colorado River

Latinos in the West have a passionate connection to the Colorado River. For centuries, our families have worked, farmed and recreated along the banks of the river and its tributaries. Cesar Chavez, whose United Farm Workers motto “Si se Puede” (Yes we can) led the fight to protect Latino laborers in California’s Imperial Valley, was raised near the Colorado. His relationship to the river and the land is illustrative and helped to shape the course of history.

But in the last few decades the condition of the Colorado River has seriously deteriorated. Nuestro Rio, a group of nearly 20,000 Latinos based in the West dedicated to protecting the river, is troubled that the Colorado River and its tributaries are painfully mistreated and drying up. Recently, our concern was echoed by river protection organization American Rivers, when it announced that the Colorado is the most endangered river in America.

The reasons are numerous: unprecedented population growth in the Southwest, energy development, climate change, 13 years of consecutive drought, and outdated water management in the face of these threats. Our river’s storage supplies are now almost half empty, and flows in several stretches of the river and its tributaries are dangerously diminished.

At stake is the drinking water for 36 million Americans, 15 percent of our nation’s crops that rely on the river system for irrigation, and a $26 billion outdoor recreation economy contingent on a healthy, flowing Colorado River.

The comprehensive Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study released by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in December 2012 concluded there is not enough water to meet the basin’s current water demands, let alone support future demand increases. The study projects the long-term average supply and demand gap will be more than 3.2 million acre feet by 2060, the amount of water used by more than 6 million U.S. households each year. Moreover, scientists predict climate change alone will reduce the Colorado River’s flow by 10 to 30 percent by 2050.

The study also indicates that the most viable, cost-effective solution to meet current and future water need is targeted investments in water conservation and reuse that can improve the reliability and sustainability of the river system. Therefore, we must compel Congress to take swift action and vigorously fund programs like the Bureau’s WaterSmart and Title XVI Water Reclamation and Reuse programs, which help stakeholders optimize existing water infrastructure, maximize available water supplies, and provide healthy river flows for communities and ecosystems.

Remarkably, there are still some that say we have 900,000 acre-feet of water left to take out of the river in Colorado — and they are planning more dams and diversions. Along Colorado’s Front Range alone, proposed projects would remove 300,000 acre feet of new water — water that will never make it downstream to Lake Powell, Lake Mead, and the states of Arizona, California and Nevada, water that is needed on the river’s southbound journey to sustain fish and wildlife in all the Colorado River states.

It is time to modernize our management and restore this vital river that gives us so much, before it is gone. One example is a historic recent agreement between the U.S. and Mexico on the Colorado River that improved water security for both nations and restored flow to the river’s parched delta in Mexico. Tools such as market-based water banks and improved water efficiency methods and technology that can be implemented on cities and farms are available to us, we just need leadership to put them into action.